half asleep in frog pajamas
by raisethebets
Summary: Dan gets the distinct impression that this is a joke where he's not in on the punch line, and two steps behind Blair Waldorf is never a good place to be. An AU take of 3x19.


**A/N: **I wanted to post this before the new episode aired, so here it is. I got lazy and broke up Dan/Vanessa to make it work. Otherwise, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Gossip Girl is, sadly, not mine. Title is from the Tom Robbins book of the same name.

* * *

**half asleep in frog pajamas**

"Humphrey!"

No. Dan feels frustrated and cranky and the universe may hate him but it wouldn't dump Blair Waldorf on his lap right now. No. No. No. No. But it doesn't matter what Dan wants; before he even has time to react, Blair plops herself down in front of him.

And the really weird thing is, he can't help but be caught off guard by how she's just buzzing with energy. The last time he saw her she was twisting her face into pained expressions and downing shot after shot. Now, she's smiles and giddiness – with an edge, Dan thinks.

"Blair, this isn't really the best time," he mutters, waving his hands in what he hopes will serve as subtle _go away_ signal.

Except Blair Waldorf doesn't do subtle.

"If you would remain silent until you hear what I have to say, I would really appreciate it," she says, exaggerating every other word to emphasize her distaste. She forces a half-smile on her face, only there to remind Dan that she's humoring him. But before she launches into her explanation, Blair grabs onto his arm and pulls. He swears he can hear her giggling as she drags him outside. She stops so abruptly his shoulder bumps into the back of hers, and then she's off again, tugging him to the edge of a crowded courtyard.

"Fantastic, this will work," she says, smug satisfaction leaking into her voice.

Dan gets the distinct impression that this is a joke where he's not in on the punch line, and two steps behind Blair Waldorf is never a good place to be. "What do you want, Blair?"

Blair sighs, as if speaking to an extremely slow child, and maybe Dan should feel insulted, but really, this is how Blair speaks with everyone. "Chuck has placed a dating _fatwa_ on me and scared off everyone eligible." She holds up a hand as if she can anticipate his interruption. Dan bites his tongue. "And so I need to kiss someone who's not socially astute enough to fear Chuck."

"I don't really see where I come into this," Dan replies wearily. Too late, he realizes it was the wrong thing to say because Blair starts smiling in this sickeningly sweet way and he swears she's batting his eyelashes at him and that uneasy feeling of bewilderment comes back, except this time he's not so much perplexed as appalled.

Oh, God. Oh, God. "No."

"Humphrey, it's just a kiss. One kiss," she wheedles, holding one finger inches away from her lips to prove the point. "Annnd," she draws out the word, obviously building up to some reward that will make this worthwhile and not… sick. "Do you know how enraged Chuck will be?"

"You couldn't find _anyone_ else who could do this?" Anyone.

"No," she says darkly. "Everyone knows not to cross Chuck Bass. But once the world realizes that someone like _you_ isn't afraid of him, then no one will be. Besides," she adds in a singsong voice, and Dan knows her well enough to know that she's enjoying this on some level. Wait, no, this is Blair. She enjoys torturing innocents like him on all levels. "Who do you have to worry about? Serena won't care. No offense."

"None taken." Although, again, it's Blair Waldorf, he thinks, and half of the words that come out of her mouth are pointed attacks designed to bruise. The other half are designed to kill (he should write that down).

"And Gossip Girl says Vanessa isn't even talking to you." Okay, that one hurts a little bit and he shrugs, noncommittally. Vanessa is the last person he wants to talk about.

"Gossip Girl is hardly the source of reliable information," he gripes, but stops at Blair's incredulous look, complete with a quirked eyebrow. "Yeah, yeah, alright, Vanessa and I are kind of done."

"So, this is perfect," she says breathlessly, and Dan is sure she's trying hard not to clap her hands together and grin maniacally. _Very_ hard.

Dan tries a different tactic. "I know you may not know this, but kissing someone to prove a point is not the healthy way to move on. I mean, are you sure playing more games is the way to get over Chuck?" He laces his voice with concern but the weary tone is still there.

Blair only rolls her eyes. And then, when deciding that isn't enough to convey her disdain, she smacks him across the shoulder with her bag. Dan blinks at her, and then mutters a belated, "Ow."

"That's sweet, Humphrey. Totally fake, but sweet," Blair laughs and Dan honestly can't tell whether she's being patronizing or not. "Believe me, I'm doing this for me. God, no, not like that," she protests at Dan's horrified expression.

"I'm not doing this because I want to make Chuck jealous – I'm doing this because I want to make it very clear that even Chuck Bass can't stop me from moving on. He doesn't get to screw around and then ban guys from dating me." Blair looks at him, firm and unwavering, and for the first time, he sees why Jenny had so desperately wanted to be her, why Blair could get away with calling herself Queen B those years in high school.

"God, Humphrey, stop looking and just kiss me." Dan wants to snort at the romantic content of her words when mixed with the exasperation of her voice, but Blair continues talking, low and intense, plainly bent on proving her point, and he's reminded of high school again and those times they schemed together and her sharp determination. Clearly, her tenacity was coming back to bite him in the ass.

"Humphrey, if you don't kiss me right now, I might as well just join a convent because – "

Which is when Dan finally resigns himself to the fact that the only way for Blair to _shut up_ and go away is to give her what she wants. He makes a strangled groan of frustration, places his hands awkwardly on her arms, and he kisses her.

Kissing Blair is… nice. He catches her mid-speech, so it's kind of sloppy and wet, but also warm, and when he closes his eyes, he forgets that she's Blair Waldorf, and can pretend she's just a pretty girl who wants to kiss him without an ulterior motive. So he wraps his arms around her, and kisses her until she recovers from her astonishment and kisses him back. He eases his mouth from her warmth, and blinks. Somehow, Blair has her hands linked behind his head and that, too, feels nice (he needs a thesaurus).

And disconcerting. Mainly disconcerting. Yes.

"Uh, hopefully, someone sent that to Gossip Girl," he says, but his voice feels scratchy and too warm, like everything else in his body. He clears his throat and lets Blair go.

Blair blinks back at him, and Dan is glad that Blair is the one in a daze for once. She brings her fingers up to her lips, and smiles (bemusedly, he thinks – hopes?). "Thanks, Humphrey." She fully extricates herself from him, and he doesn't want to be cheesy, but he can feel the loss of her heat.

She pats him once, twice, on the shoulder and walks away and Dan's not sure what just happened. He raises his hand and waves. "See you later, Waldorf."

Gossip Girl sends a blast later that night. Dan has one message from Serena, three from Vanessa, and one from Blair. He checks Blair's first.


End file.
